Another hobgoblin

My mixed force of Chronicle and Dixon hobgoblins (bakemono and oni in the latter case) is growing.

 It's quite liberating to follow the example of Japanese goblins and ogres and disregard any consistency of colour entirely. After all, D&D (and hence Warhammer) hobgoblins are, in their original conception, creatures of chaos.

A great big goblin

 This is a very simple conversion of a Reaper Bones orc, with the original small head replaced by a much larger GW goblin one and a bowstring added with thread. 

He's quite a sizeable fellow - that's a 30mm base - so he'll make a good leader or enforcer for the goblin band I've been working on. 

A Chronicle hobgoblin

 Here's a blast from the past: one of Nick Lund's Chronicle hobgoblins, which were produced by Citadel in the early 80s. 

When I was a child, these were some of the most sought-after miniatures for their sheer heft and menace. They were also a staple of the Joe Dever/Gary Chalk armies that featured in White Dwarf and the like at that time.

 The later, slottabased Chronicle range were finer sculpts with plenty of attractions of their own, but they lack the bulk and brutality of the earlier range:

A Tin Soldier orc in a retro style

 Here's an orc from Tin Soldier painted in a somewhat retro style with heavy blacklining in ink. 

Although I had originally based many of them on pennies, I've decided to put all the 25mm RPG figures I've been hoarding on 20mm square MDF bases (if the figures are roughly human sized). That renders them more easily usable in wargames too, and means that groups of figures can be bluetacked neatly to larger bases for Hordes of the Things and Kings of War and the like: so six of these orcs could fill a 60 x 40mm base to be a 'horde' element. 

Having most figures based in the same way means more versatility and cross-compatability. So hobgoblins in 25mm can be mere goblins in 28mm, and brightly painted 25mm knights might serve as diminutive elf-knights in 28mm, and so on. I find square bases a bit more useful than round bases, all things considered. I can't think of any game system in which round bases are mechanically significant. The same's not true of squares.

I'm also increasingly interested in the idea of switching between RPG and wargame modes in the same campaign (using a 1:10 or 1:20 figure scale for the latter), something that square bases facilitate. So square MDF bases all round it is - with the exception of plastic rounds for 28mm sci-fi and plastic fantasy skirmish figures, and pennies for 15mm sci-fi.

A Hinchliffe/Broadsword goblin and some 25mm RPG miniatures

 

Here's a Hinchliffe goblin (now produced by Broadsword Miniatures). I really like these venerable orcs; were I to do the Battle of the Five Armies for Hordes of the Things or equivalent, these are the fellows I'd use for the goblin army. They might not be an exact match for JRRT's descriptions of orcs in The Lord of the Rings, but they contravene nothing in the text of The Hobbit. 

In our D&D games, these fellows will probably serve as hobgoblins, as they're fairly hefty next to the "true 25mm" figures that I'm painting up for RPGs. Below are a couple from Tin Soldier and a Julie Guthrie half-orc from Grenadier alongside the Hinchliffe goblin.

"Where there's a whip ..."

Here's the hobgoblin torturer from our Keep on the Borderlands campaign. He was slain by the PCs before his miniature was quite finished, but such was the orgy of slaughter in the hobgoblin caves that I doubt any of the players noticed.

For some reason, the mercy that the PCs showed to certain lizardmen, goblins and orcs was not extended to hobgoblins - possibly because of the stinging defeats that the blue-nosed fiends inflicted on some of the party's early expeditions.

Having cleared the Caves of Chaos, the party has taken to the seas. So I suspect that this fellow will be reincarnated as a slave-driver in some future encounter.

I think these GW orcs make quite good Gygaxian hobgoblins: they've got the right combination of goofiness and menace. This fellow was made from the body of a space ork, the head of a black orc and various other bits and bobs from other kits.

More gaming archaeology - hobgoblins in D&D and Warhammer

After exploring the influence that the Monster Manual had on Citadel's Fantasy Tribe orcs and dwarfs, I though I'd have a poke around and see if the hobgoblin entry shed any light on Citadel's early range.

And it did. Some armament influences are detectable: "sword & whip" - possibly the origin of the "discipline master" figure that recurred throughout Citadel's early hobgoblin ranges. And the mace that the fellow above is holding could be loosely interpreted as a morning star.

But look at the paragraph below the weapon list:

That business with the standard must surely be the source of the hobgoblin propensity to Frenzy in the Warhammer rules. It's there in the first and second editions. But in the third edition, it's restricted to Mourngul hobgoblins in the presence of their tribal standard (pulled on a hobhound-drawn cart if I remember correctly). 

A case of Warhammer hobgoblins returning to their roots? 

Blue-nosed bastards!

Seven rebased old hobgoblins to go with the recently painted Ral Partha one. A mix of Citadel, Grenadier, Acropolis and Chronicle.

These fellows caused the party no end of trouble in yesterday's Keep on the Borderlands session. Most of the party are currently cowering in a hollow in the woods beyond the ravine, one shot through the leg with a crossbow bolt, another with crushed ribs from a trap, all trying to still their very heartbeats ...

A Ral Partha hobgoblin - blue nose and all!

In D&D, hobgoblins are one of the more uniform and organised of the monstrous humanoid races. But - aside from the marvellous Aly Morrison Citadel range - there aren't many large ranges for them.

My solution is to unite disparate miniatures with a uniform paint scheme: blue noses and orange hides/fur, like golden monkeys.

This one's an old Ral Partha miniature. I have a couple more to go with him.

More blue-nosed hobgoblins!

More BLUE-NOSED fiends!

Two more Chronicle hobgoblins and one more Nack Tryber (with the crossbow).

Like Beowulf's dragon (or Smaug) missing a cup, I am painfully aware that I have a bareheaded version of the two-handed swordsman somewhere. But where?

Militaristic, orange-skinned ape-men with BLUE NOSES!

Or, if you really must, AD&D-style hobgoblins.

I've got a warband of these on the go, using pre-slotta-based Chronicle hobgoblins, Acropolis "Nack Trybe" goblin and Dixon bakemono goblins.

All of these miniatures are fairly crude by contemporary standards, so I haven't tried anything fancy with the paintjobs. Indeed, I've used fewer highlights than I normally would.

Rather than just pick out the noses in blue, I gave them blue around the mouth too. That's to emphasise the simian nature of their faces and because many of the Chronicle ones have nose-guards on their helmets.

My daughter's cuddly golden monkey was also an influence here, as was a memory of noism's post about Yoon-Suin goblins (which also features golden monkeys). These chaps are distinctly less cuddly, though.

I have various other painted Chronicle hobgoblins kicking around. I painted up one of them to join this experimental orcs (using the black-no-highlights technique that Spooktalker uses to amazing effect here), but he's destined for the Biostrip now (he's the one with the topknot on the left). I have a duplicate of the Nack Trybe goblin on the left, so he won't need to be stripped. 

The chaps below, on the other hand, are all headed for the Biostrip. I painted them a couple of years ago, and they've done a fair bit of service in our domestic skirmish games, but I think they'll look better with a weirder colour scheme. I do like the checked cloak, though, so may replicate that on the blue-nosed version.

I also have another four or five Nack Trybe types to add. What I don't have - yet - is the tusked chief, which happens to be based on a quick sketch I did when I was a kid (I was paid in Acropolis goblins and Citadel gnolls/great goblins, a transaction that looks a better deal with every passing day ...). But I see that he's still available from the Baggage Train, so I'll add him to the pile too. Once upon a time, I had a nicely painted version, but he vanished to some charity shop or other many moons ago, I believe.

When I say that these miniatures are relatively crude, I don't mean that pejoratively. I think Nick Lund, the Chronicle sculptor, had a certain genius that often makes his miniatures look absolutely marvellous on the tabletop, whatever their technical limitations. He did some more sophisticated stuff for Citadel (like his slotta-based black orcs, which I'm painting up as "winter orcs" - see below) and then some cruder stuff for Grenadier (like the black orcs with the red and yellow shields above), but there's something about the way the miniatures occupy space that makes them look so much better on the table than any number of more technically sophisticated equivalents.

His ogres are marvellous - great chunks of brutality:

Some of the Acropolis stuff by Paul Henni (who did the massive Ugruck goblins) and Colin Hamilton (who did the smaller goblins, including the Nack Trybe) has a similar power. I really like this Ugruck, for example; he often features as an ogre or troll in our games:

And the goblin khan on the left below is a marvellous miniatures. I have several of him and his ilk kicking around. And that raises another question. Should the orange hobgoblins get some goblins to boss around? And if so, should they have blue noses? 

What's in a name? Hobgoblins, grumkins and snarks

Less orangey than some ...

Giving monsters names gets in the way. To build on my last post, while "militaristic, orange-skinned, blue-nosed ape-man" is a bit of a mouthful, it works much better in games than "hobgoblin".

Not that hobgoblin isn't evocative: it's just that in everyday English and with normal people, hobgoblin doesn't evoke militaristic, orange-skinned, blue-nosed ape-men. Nor should it; I'd hate to think of Gygaxian imagery intruding into A Midsummer Night's Dream: 

Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck

Not really Shakespearian ...

And David Sutherland's classic samurai-hobgoblins aren't really appropriate in Bunyan either:

Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend

Can daunt his spirit

The hobgoblins of Dragon Warriors fit much better, of course; they're Bunyan hobgoblins rather than Shakespearian ones, because by Bunyan's time, the word had shifted from connoting a friendly or domestic spirit to suggesting a more malevolent one. But they're certainly folkloric hobgoblins. Old Ned in The Elven Crystals doesn't need much description because he's a capricious fairy who abducts innkeepers' daughters (and doubtless daunts the spirits of pilgrims when he can). So call him a hobgoblin and be done with it.

Now, in generic D&D, "hobgoblin" works if everyone's familiar with the old Gygaxian tropes. But doesn't that familiarity breed a certain amount of contempt? Isn't it often - dare I say? - boring? 

That's why I find tribe more interesting than species when it comes to humanoids. What scraps of anthropology I've picked up over the years suggests that pretty much any tribal people will call themselves something that means The People or The Folk. Translate that into the tongue of your blue-nosed orange apes or your greenish pig-folk or your pallid cave dwellers, and you've got the 'race' name. (Tolkien understood this; the Uruk-hai translates, pretty much, as the Orc-folk.) And then for the particular clan or sub-tribe are in the area, you can have your Marrow Suckers or Slow Killers or whatever. 

I find that approach much more evocative than hobgoblins. But there's more. Going with gonzo descriptions and a tribal approach to names frees up the folkloric terms to solve the "grumkin and snark" problem. The what? Remember Tyrion Lannister dismissing talk of the Others/White Walkers as "grumkins and snarks" in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones? 

Here's the problem. If you use up your mythic and folkloric terms for real-world things, you rob your setting of the unknown, the weird and the eerie. Then, instead of hobgoblin or ghost, you have to turn to the equivalent of grumkins and snarks to fill in. And that's less than satisfying: I think George Martin would have been better served by having Tyrion talk of goblins and elves or something. 

But if the uplands are colonised by blue-nosed orange ape-men who call themselves Ar Urtog ("The People") and belong to the Marrow Sucker clan, then NPCs are freed up to spread rumours of ghosts, hobgoblins and devils in them thar hills ...